Expat Syrians Lead Double Lives as the Crisis Drags On

Muhannad Barazi told his wife he was making the trip from their home in Orange County, California to southern Turkey to help distribute crates of aid along the border, collected from other Syrian-Americans in the community and across the US.

What he didn’t tell her was that he would be making his first trip back to Syria in over a decade with a dash over the Turkish border to take those supplies deep into rebel-held territory.

“I was in Syria and out of communication for a day and a half when she found out,” says Mr. Barazi, 34 years old. “It was like a crying yell,” he said of his wife’s reaction.

Muhannad Barazi

Muhannad Barazi, top left, with other Syrian activists and a crowd of refugee children in Atmeh, Syria.

Well-built with a pony-tail tied low, Mr. Barazi looks every bit the California kick-boxer that he was. He once ranked fourth place in American amateur kick-boxing and tried a stint in professional mixed martial arts before focusing on the family’s vitamins business in California.

He looks very little like a Syrian rebel. He is one of hundreds of Syrian Americans to leave their jobs and homes–some periodically, others permanently–to help with the aid effort along Turkey’s long border with Syria.

Many come from families that emigrated from Syria to the US decades ago. Some, like Mr. Barazi’s father, are political exiles whose children and grandchildren are now active supporters of the anti-government uprising.

Most organize donations drives, from Seattle to Washington, and fund raise for relief work. Doctors have taken their skills into northern Syria to work at field clinics. Some college students have abandoned studies to join activists documenting the war, and at least a handful have covertly taken up arms with rebels fighting the government.

These Syrians say they end up leading double-lives: one of relative normalcy and routine in the US, with dips into unpredictable risk and chaos in Syria.

“The strangest part is having to play the role,” says Mr. Barazi, who said he distributed food and medicines in Idlib and Aleppo provinces during two trips, in December and January. “Even for an Arab, I don’t have very orthodox views of Islam. So when I go in there, I have to put on that face everyone is expecting.”

He grew a beard before his trip, he says, to match his long hair, “because I didn’t want to look like a punk.”

The former kick-boxer says he often itches to help the rebels in Syria with more than medical supplies and clothing donations, but holds back because he thinks of his family. “I absolutely want to fight, but I have a wife and a two-year-old daughter who would kill me if I didn’t come back from the battle alive.”

Later, second-guessing himself, he says: “Everyone has a wife and kid.”

Back home in Orange County, a landscaped backyard and two cars in the driveway are reminders of the booming family business Mr. Barazi partly neglects when he leaves to Turkey, and of how different his life is to the war-time misery of rebel-held Syria.

“I’m buying a car now, but I think: that’s a lot of money, it can do so much,” he says. “Suddenly, you’re not throwing things away, and you’re thinking twice.”